A new report from Human Rights Watch (HRW), titled, “Forced to Give up on Their Dreams,” concluded that Guatemala is failing to meet its obligations to girls who are pregnant as a result of sexual assault. However, in determining that the nation must create wider access to abortion (specifically for pregnant survivors of sexual assault), HRW failed to survey the survivors themselves.
The report called for an expanded abortion law as well as increased access to resources for both prenatal care and post-birth assistance based on interviews with specific individuals. HRW interviewed 21 representatives from civil society organizations, 41 government officials, attorneys who worked with assault survivors, and healthcare workers. The goal was to discover in what ways the Guatemalan government has failed young sexual assault survivors. It did not speak directly with the girls who would be affected by the expansion of laws and resources, because it was concerned about re-traumatizing them.
In addition to increased access to health care such as prenatal, labor and delivery, and postnatal care, the report highlighted a lack of access to abortion as an obligation to assault survivors that Guatemala is not meeting.
The report stated, “[G]irls are often not informed about their right to obtain therapeutic abortion – an option when the life of the pregnant person is at risk-effectively denying them access to this care.”
In 2024, 1,953 girls ages 14 and under gave birth in Guatemala — and the report referred to this as “forced motherhood.” HRW criticized Guatemala for an “overly narrow approach to therapeutic abortion” that “endangers the health and lives of girls whose only option is to continue forced and often risky pregnancies even against their wishes, denying them essential reproductive health care.” It urged the nation’s Ministry of Public Health and Social Assistance to “[f]ully respect the rights of pregnant girls and survivors of sexual violence, including by ensuring access to emergency contraception, therapeutic abortion care, maternal care, and mental health services.”
READ: Biden administration pressures Guatemala to embrace abortion
Though abortion is only legal in Guatemala to save the mother’s life, the report states that anyone pregnant under the age of 14 would be able to have an abortion because of “the physical and mental health risks associated with early pregnancy and pregnancy resulting from sexual violence.” It calls for the Protocol on Sexual Violence and Trafficking to be updated to include abortion as an option for pregnant assault victims under age 14.
And although it calls for the expansion of programs for girls who choose life and states that such programs must “have a girl-centered approach,” it failed to ask girls what they would have wanted or needed when they learned they were pregnant from rape or incest. Their opinion is the most valid of all, whether it would have been difficult to talk about or not. They deserved the opportunity to share their thoughts.
Because HRW failed to inquire about the opinions of the girls at the center of the debate, it is impossible to know if those girls truly wanted abortions, and it’s also impossible to know that even if they did originally want an abortion, if they are now happy that they were denied one.
Even the results from the extremely flawed Turnaway Study from 2020, which claimed women don’t regret abortion, showed that women who wanted abortions but were denied them were ultimately happy that they were not able to abort their children. Only four percent (4%) of women who were denied abortions still wished they had an abortion five years later, even with the skewing of the study. That means 96% of the women who were denied abortions (and who stayed in the study) were happy about it — happy to be mothers.
Denying sexual assault survivors the opportunity to share their thoughts, desires, and opinions on the resources available to them further denies their value as human beings.
